


My People Skills are Nonexistent

by EveryDayArtist



Series: Phone Call of Destiny and Other Adventures [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: 5 Times, Friendship, Funny, Gen, plus 1, zoro doesn't 'people' well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 03:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4731539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveryDayArtist/pseuds/EveryDayArtist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Zoro accidentally made a friend and one time he knew exactly what he was doing. </p><p>Little silly, short and just for fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My People Skills are Nonexistent

~*~Sanji~*~

Being ten, it was true that Zoro really shouldn’t have been wandering around the neighborhood by himself at night but he had to get out of the house. It had been ridiculously easy to escape through his bedroom window once his dad had gone to sleep, shimmy down the drain-pipe and climb over the garden wall. And for an excitable kid, being out at night was enough of a rush without doing anything in particular, just wandering about and reveling in his expert escape from his home.

Now the problem was finding it again.

This was why moving sucked, this area had the worst street system in the history of cities. His younger sister said he just had no navigational abilities but he knew it was simply that the streets moved. But he’d outwitted them this time, there it was... He beamed up at it, then contemplated what might happen if his dad were to wake up when he reentered; best to go in through the back. The last thing he wanted was for his parent to find out he’d gone out on his own again, that would just get him grounded for life. He vaulted the backyard fence and dropped down onto the grass, feeling smug. He was about to figure out how to scale to his bedroom window when:

“What are you doing?”

Sitting on top of a tree stump, wrapped in a giant sweatshirt, was a boy his age staring back at him. He cocked his head to the side, making his shaggy blonde hair fall even farther over one of his eyes and Zoro managed to stammer out, “Going home?” over his surprise.

The other boy smiled, eyes lighting up, “Did you just move here? I didn’t know any other kids lived around here.”

“Yeah, last week.” Zoro admitted. “With my dad and my sister.”

“Yeah? I’m Sanji. What’s your name?”

“...Zoro.” He turned away. “Bye.”

“Why’s your hair so stupid?”

Eyes wide, the boy turned to glare over at the blond, who sat with his legs dangling over the stump’s edge. “It’s not stupid!”

“It’s green.” Sanji said, voice full of amusement.

Zoro bristled and stuck his hands on his hips. “Yours is stupid too! And your eyebrow!”

Why the hell was it shaped like a spiral? Sanji stuck his tongue out. “You look like…” His eye brightened. “Like a moss-head!”

“Curly-brow!”

“Stupid!”

“Girly-boy!”

Sanji flushed at that, then got a wicked look on his face before it mellowed out to a neutral expression and he hopped off the stump. “Whatever.”

Zoro huffed triumphantly and started to stalk toward the house.

“That’s my house, by the way.”

He stopped and felt the heat begin in his cheeks as Sanji smiled sweetly and pointed to house to the left. “That’s your house, I think.”

Feeling prickly under that smug look, Zoro asked. “Why are you out here anyway?”

“...Was looking at the sky.” Sanji shrugged and scuffed the ground before dashing for the house. “Don’t get lost, stupid moss-head!”

That could, and should, have been the end of it but the next day he started the trek to school only to hear derisive laughter behind him and turned to see Sanji standing on the sidewalk, giggling into his hands. Zoro barked, “What?”

“Did your dad give you directions to the school?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re going the wrong way.”

“Shut up!”

Sanji continued to giggle as Zoro stalked past and trotted behind him, teasing unmercifully.

Zoro hated him, he’d decided that very early on, but for some reason he would not leave him alone. Every morning he’d walk with him and this went on for years, soon it wasn’t just walks, it was in class and on weekends and they spent almost as much time at each other's houses as their own. He’d made a friend somehow and it kind of pissed him off because he’d not been consulted about this!

~*~Usopp~*~

Zoro really, really didn’t want to be dealing with this right now. It had been a terrible idea, in particular the going to a party with Sanji in the first place part, and of course his dumbass neighbor went and pissed off a couple of other underaged drinkers and now they were dragging an unconscious teenager through the doorway of his home, thankful that his dad was out for the weekend and sister was staying with friends. Sanji giggled as they shoved the kid, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, onto the couch. “That was hilarious.”

“That was ridiculous.” Zoro seethed. “You cannot hold your booze, you moron.”

“Shaddup, moss-head. I c’n hold it fine but those assholes were so drunk tha’ they needed to be taken down a couple of pegs.”

“Sanji. They were kids.”

“Yer a kid!”

Zoro closed his eyes tightly and sighed. “I hate you.” The blond giggled again, doubling over and falling against the other boy. Zoro glared at him. “Go lie down in my room right now or I call Zeff and let him come get your ass.”

That got Sanji to leave quickly and the green haired boy sighed and squatted next to the passed out freshman. He rifled in his coat pockets to find his wallet and looked at his ID; Usopp, ‘the hell kind of name was Usopp? He kept searching and had just found his phone when the kid woke up with a groan and blinked his dark eyes up at the older teen before they widened with panic. Zoro calmly shoved him down on to the couch and ordered, “Stay still. I’m calling your mom.”

“Nononononononono!” The kid sat up, head obviously spinning but looking panicked. “I’m s’posed to be with a friend, studying. No one can know that I w-”

“You were unconscious.” Zoro said firmly. “I think that your mom deserves to know and would want to, don’t you?”

“...Well, she’s dead, so I doubt it.”

The older teen froze. Usopp just rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face into the pillow. “I live with my aunt, my dad’s never home, my mom died a year ago, and now I’ve humiliated myself in front of my classmates. Life sucks and I suck so I guess do whatever. Being grounded for the rest of my life might be for the best.”

Zoro wasn’t sure how to respond to that; when the kid--Usopp--had tried to knock his lights out during the drunken brawl he’d been vaguely irritated, when he’d overshot himself and ended up knocking himself out he’d been kind of amused; but at the realization that everyone else at the party was too drunk to care he’d known that he and Sanji needed to do something. For the time being he decided to call the freshman’s aunt to let her know he was staying at a ‘friend’s house’, placed a barf bucket next to the couch and settled in to watch over him.

Zoro woke up to find Sanji standing over the couch, loudly stirring a pan of eggs with a metal fork as Usopp moaned and tried to cover his ears with one of the pillows. The blond boy was grinning wickedly, “I’m so-orry, is this toooo looooouuud?”

“Swirly brow!”

Sanji ducked the shoe thrown at his head as he responded to Zoro’s comment. The green-haired boy glared at him. “Leave the kid alone.”

“Zippit, moss-head.”

“Make me, love-quack.”

“I will, you navigationally challenged-”

“Stop bringing that up! I am not that bad!”

“You’d get lost on the way to the bathroom!”

“Keep that up and I’ll tell everyone about the time you-”

“Oh crap.” Usopp was staring at them wearily. “I just figured out who you guys are. You’re those juniors who never stop arguing.”

Sanji beamed. “Everyone knows us!”

“Everyone thinks you’re both insane.” The younger boy pointed out. “I guess that’s why I went after you last night. I must have figured that if I took one of you down a peg people might actually like me. I must have been plastered... ” He looked horrified for a moment but quickly hid it and huffed unconvincingly. “I mean, to have messed up that bad. If I’d been sober, I totally would have kicked your ass.”

They stared down at him for a long moment before Zoro flopped back to sprawl on the floor and Sanji turned back to the kitchen. “Food’ll be ready soon.”

Zoro hesitated as he moved to brush his teeth and looked over at the younger man. “Even if it backfired, I think that it took balls to stand up to us last night. You should give yourself some more credit.”

Zoro couldn’t help but notice that Usopp was around a lot over the next few days. Which somehow turned into months. Their duo had turned into a trio without him noticing and he was a little bitter about it.

~*~Luffy~*~

Monkey D. Luffy crashed into his life without warning one day in detention and from that first second he was totally and utterly screwed.

~*~Robin~*~

He met Nico Robin through Luffy, although how the kid knew her was a mystery. One day his little world, consisting of his family, Luffy, Sanji and Usopp, was calm and undisturbed. The next Luffy was dragging him bodily into the local library, babbling incoherently. They got a round of glares and ‘shush’ing noises but the younger boy ignored them and continued on his path, straight for the information desk. “Rooooooobiiiiiin!”

The woman behind the counter looked up calmly from her book, placed a bookmark on the page and closed it with a serene smile. “Hullo, Luffy. Is this Zoro?”

“Yes!” Luffy grinned widely, hopping onto the counter and swinging his legs back and forth. “He’s my best friend! Can he see the book you found?”

Robin smiled kindly and pulled a thin, hardbound book from a shelf. She handed it over to the swordsman, who gave it a brief look before his eyes widened and he snatched it from her hands. “Where did you find this?!”

“In one of the back rooms, I think they were getting rid of it.” Robin’s face showed what she thought of that decision. “I showed it to Luffy and he said you’d like to see it.”

“This is my sensei.” Zoro showed them a faded photo in the album, pointing at a man dressed in a kii and hefting a katana with an unconcerned smile. “This must be the book they made after his last tournament before he retired. I can’t believe you found this.”

She smiled. “The only love I have that outweighs my love of books is that for history. I’m glad that seeing this pleases you so much, I’m glad I hung onto it. You may keep it, if you like.”

“Really?”

“Well, you’re obviously taken with it. I don’t blame you, swordplay is a fascinating subject. It’s hard not to be enthralled with something so dangerous and deadly.”

...He agreed, but the look in her eyes kind of unnerved him. He also wasn’t too pleased that they were bringing in an adult into their circle.

 ~*~Nami~*~

“...Why the hell is this witch here?” Even after a year of knowing Luffy, Zoro’d managed to only interact with Nami on a very rare basis. Their personalities just clashed and they’d probably have killed each other if they hadn’t been worried about upsetting Luffy. And now, for some reason, she was in his living room. She stuck her tongue out just as a ladle slammed into the back of his head.

“Oi, asshole! Don’t talk about her that way!”

Rubbing at his head he turned to glare at his roommate, who was glaring back from the kitchen. “Why is she here?”

“I’m cooking for her, moss-head.”

“Why?”

“We’re dating now.” Sanji chirped happily.

“Sort of dating.” Nami interjected firmly.

“Possibly dating.” Sanji quickly backtracked.

“Probably dating.” Nami said with a fond smile.

She laughed at Sanji’s overjoyed chirping from the other room as Zoro rubbed at his face and stalked to his room with the grim acceptance that they had yet another constant in their lives.

~*~+Kuina~*~

Zoro watched silently as the older girl worked furiously at her katas. Kuina was breathing heavily and staring ahead with complete concentration, sweat dripped from her chin as she snapped. “You need something?”

He slowly stood up and walked over to her, nervously grasping at his practice sword. “...C’n I practice with you?”

She blinked and stared down at him. “...I thought-”

“Well, only one of us is gonna be the best so it makes sense we need to practice together because only one of us should be able to beat the other, right?”

Kuina grinned down at him and nodded. “Right, makes sense. So, friends?”

Zoro beamed. “Friends.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Luffy and Zoro meeting will be a multi-chapter fic later on because no way I can do that quickly.


End file.
